Cutting-edge space science technology of the sort used to analyse moon rock is being applied to fragments of 16th-century tombs. Scientists from the Space Research Centre in Leicester are working with an art historian from the nearby university as well as academics from Oxford and Yale in a three-year project that hopes to shed new light on our understanding of the Tudor Reformation.

The tombs, at the parish church in Framlingham, are close to the family seat of the Howards, the extremely wealthy and powerful Dukes of Norfolk. But they were originally sited 40 miles away at Thetford Priory, traditional resting place of the Howards until Henry VIII had it dissolved in 1539. They were moved and reassembled some time in the 1540s while the third duke languished in the Tower of London. (Henry was becoming increasingly paranoid about the threat that he posed to his infant heir.) The reassembly process was flawed, however. Some different materials were used.

What appear to be fragments of the original tombs were unearthed at Thetford by archaeologists as long ago as 1934. But they languished in a warehouse for decades and came to light only recently, when Dr Simon Thurley took over as chief executive of English Heritage and asked all curators to find out what they had in store.

Leicester University art historian Dr Phillip Lindley was called in to investigate the fragments and was immediately fascinated – not just by the quality of the artwork by French sculptors, but also by the possibilities that arose of re-thinking parts of Tudor history. "We're trying to relate what happened to the monuments to what happened to the number one power family of the day," he says.

Lindley would like to be able to take the tombs apart and investigate how they were reassembled. "Obviously I can't do that," he says. "But I was talking about it to scientists at the Space Research Centre who proposed that we scan them, take them apart virtually and then put them back together again to look as the Howards originally intended. It's like doing a jig-saw puzzle on screen with all the pieces mixed up."

The two main tombs were commissioned for the third duke himself and for his son-in-law, Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond, who died in 1536, aged just 17, and happened to be the illegitimate son of the king himself. (The fortunes of the Tudors and the Howards were intertwined; hence historians' ongoing fascination.) Fitzroy had become firm friends during his short life with his brother-in-law, the Earl of Surrey. Yet another Howard, Surrey was the third duke's son and the man who introduced the sonnet to England with Thomas Wyatt. That didn't cut any ice with the king. He had Surrey executed for treason shortly before his own death in 1547.

Surrey's tomb is at Framlingham as well and is currently being investigated by Dr Lisa Ford of the Yale Center for British Art. "I was talking to Lisa over a coffee when I was at Yale," Lindley recounts. "By an astonishing coincidence, we discovered that we were both absorbed by tombs in the same small corner of England."

Another key member of the research team is historian Dr Steven Gunn, of Merton College, Oxford, charged with providing historical context for the findings. "The Howards are central to our understanding of the artistic development of 16th-century England," he says. "We know that their tombs were moved from Thetford during the third duke's imprisonment, and we now have what seem to be the missing pieces. But was it a case of taking them to Framlingham because they'd already been destroyed, or did they have an Ikea-type tomb kit ready to be put together at Framlingham when Thetford was dissolved?"

Lindley has other questions: "Why were parts of the monuments left at Thetford? Had the third duke's and Fitzroy's tombs been dismantled and taken to Framlingham while the duke was in prison? Or are the excavated fragments the remains of the third tomb [Surrey's]?" He is hoping that the virtual technology will help the research team to provide some answers.

Gunn also hopes that what he calls "this Time Team approach to archaeological reconstruction" will appeal to the general public and to school children. And the "audience advocate" will be striving to ensure that it does. The project has attracted funding of £497,000 from two research councils – Arts and Humanities and Engineering and Physical Sciences – and, for what is thought to be the first time in the field of research, the team has appointed someone to ensure value for money. "My role," says freelance interdisciplinary scientist Dr Adair Richards, "is to ensure that a project funded by public money serves the public. One way we're going to do this is to work with English Heritage to create a learning toolkit to allow teachers to present Tudor history in a new way, with a focus on the research process rather than just the results."

The hope is that up-to-the-minute space technology will provide children of the future with a new way of looking at clues that illuminate the past.